Google Prompts: Craft & Execution
Craft & Execution questions for Google are both new and old. The types of questions we are seeing pop up in Craft & Execution questions for Google are a mix of questions that have been used at Google in both Strategy and Analytics interviews for years. Now they are more institutionalized and categorized as measuring certain crucial skills you use day to day.
Bit of Advice
If you have been studying for Strategy questions, start with the more execution-focused questions first. Then move your way toward those questions that sound more strategic than execution. Why? I have seen a lot of people who worked hard to stay high-level in strategy questions (1) getting confused on the question type and/or then (2) staying too high-level and not demonstrating that they can indeed execute.
There are several types of questions we are seeing come up. Note, most questions can be answered in 5 to 15 minutes maximum.
Trade Off:
Data-Driven - Most common, think 20 Questions about the data you can use to find the problem. Understand that why and goals of the product, and the measures that go along with it.
Situational - The secret is in the clarifying questions followed by strategic approach to the hypothetical. Use common sense based on experience to answer.
Product Launch - Touches on the key parts of being a PM. Problem Identification. Propose a Solution for a particular User. Consider monetization strategies. Is the possible total addressable market large enough to make it work the effort of exploring.
Data-Driven + Cross-Functional Communication - Getting things done at Google requires working with a lot of stakeholders. And the ultimate in prioritization is deciding to sunset a product. Questions in this category test both. Talking about the data you would look at, the goal alignment, and cross-functional conversations will be enough to get you through.
Sample Prompts
Data-Driven Trade-Off: YouTube Shorts view time is up by 10% and YouTube watch time is down by 5%. What do you do? OR Snapchat app redesign increased time spent but reduces Snaps sent and stories shared. Should you ship it?
Note: You need to first evaluate independent causes for these as hypotheses and then drill down on the correlation hypothesis.
Situational Trade-Off: You are about to launch a new app that is of strategic importance for the company. 1 month out from launch internal ‘dogfooding’ suggests the app isn't ready (you are below target on several key metrics including CSAT). What do you do?
Product Launch: Imagine I'm a VC, offering you $20M to build any technology-enabled product/service you'd like. Please walk me through how you would get started. (Problem, Solution, User, Monetize, TAM)
Data-Driven Product Management with Cross-Functional Components: At what milestone or markers would you look for to determine if a product isn’t performing well and what considerations do you make before you sunset the product? What is the process you would lay out? How do you handle the stakeholders?
Crisis Response: Suppose you are a PM at Airbnb and found that a hack had just exposed the data of 5 million guests. What would you do? OR You are a PM on the Google Pixel Buds team and you promised Best Buy that you would launch the latest version in September, but the engineering team says they will not be ready until December. What do you do?
Root Cause Analysis: Microsoft Teams saw a 50% drop in new downloads. How do you figure out what happened?
Metrics: What metrics would you track if you were focused on improving Airbnb’s check-in experience? Imagine you were the PM on User’s driver app. What key metrics would you be looking at? Build an ML Model to predict granola bar sales in a given Walmart store. Your model can only take in 10 variables.
Other Resources:
Exponent: They recommend focusing on immediate context, product elements, and strategic elements. This plays out by (1) Assessing the situation, (2) Discuss/Pick the Product and Explain the business context.
I Got An Offer - Very much the same list of questions I had sourced above.